Montezuma's Daughter eBook

Now I write of this for a reason, though it has nothing
to do with me, for it seems that as Dionysus possessed
Agave, driving her to unnatural murder, so did Huitzel
possess Otomie, and indeed she said as much to me
afterwards. For I am sure that if the devils whom
the Greeks worshipped had such power, a still greater
strength was given to those of Anahuac, who among
all fiends were the first. If this be so, as I
believe, it was not Otomie that I saw at the rites
of sacrifice, but rather the demon Huitzel whom she
had once worshipped, and who had power, therefore,
to enter into her body for awhile in place of her
own spirit.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE SURRENDER

Taking Otomie in my arms, I bore her to one of the
storehouses attached to the temple. Here many
children had been placed for safety, among them my
own son.

‘What ails our mother, father?’ said the
boy. ’And why did she shut me in here with
these children when it seems that there is fighting
without?’

‘Your mother has fainted,’ I answered,
’and doubtless she placed you here to keep you
safe. Now do you tend her till I return.’

‘I will do so,’ answered the boy, ’but
surely it would be better that I, who am almost a
man, should be without, fighting the Spaniards at your
side rather than within, nursing sick women.’

‘Do as I bid you, son,’ I said, ’and
I charge you not to leave this place until I come
for you again.’

Now I passed out of the storehouse, shutting the door
behind me. A minute later I wished that I had
stayed where I was, since on the platform my eyes
were greeted by a sight more dreadful than any that
had gone before. For there, advancing towards
us, were the women divided into four great companies,
some of them bearing infants in their arms. They
came singing and leaping, many of them naked to the
middle. Nor was this all, for in front of them
ran the pabas and such of the women themselves as
were persons in authority. These leaders, male
and female, ran and leaped and sang, calling upon
the names of their demon-gods, and celebrating the
wickednesses of their forefathers, while after them
poured the howling troops of women.

To and fro they rushed, now making obeisance to the
statue of Huitzel, now prostrating themselves before
his hideous sister, the goddess of Death, who sat
beside him adorned with her carven necklace of men’s
skulls and hands, now bowing around the stone of sacrifice,
and now thrusting their bare arms into the flames
of the holy fire. For an hour or more they celebrated
this ghastly carnival, of which even I, versed as
I was in the Indian customs, could not fully understand
the meaning, and then, as though some single impulse
had possessed them, they withdrew to the centre of
the open space, and, forming themselves into a double
circle, within which stood the pabas, of a sudden they
burst into a chant so wild and shrill that as I listened
my blood curdled in my veins.